Late start, new season

Our first proper visit to the allotment this year. The petrol strimmer wouldn't start, so not much we could do about the very long grass covering most of the plot. Nevertheless it was a very productive afternoon. We concentrated on weeding the raised beds, digging over the non-raised bed (last year's potato patch), and planting seed potatoes. I decided it was a bit too late to plant the first earlies, so didn't bother with them. One raised bed was filled with Kestrel (2nd earlies, which stood up to the blight reasonably well last year, and produced good tubers); the other bed got a couple of rows of Charlotte (salad potatoes) and a row of Edzell Blue (2nd earlies, but with blue/violet skin and white flesh).

On the fruit bushes there's the beginnings of a huge crop of gooseberries, and the rhubarb plants are enormous and I thinned them out a bit.

At home in the greenhouse things haven't been so dormant! I've grown a wide selection of chillies from seed over the last couple of months, which are now in the greenhouse in little pots. I chose to avoid tomatoes completely this year, after the disappointment of the last couple of seasons. And also a mixture of cucumber, courgette and squash/pumpkin plants, which seem to have been doing very well so far. The greenhouse if pretty much full already!

Don't know where I've put my camera at the moment, so no photographs until I find it again!